Those DVR numbers are very wrong. It is not important to this whole discussion, I just don´t want them to enter into the folklore.

What my post said was that the NCTA claimed that, through the beginning of December, the 5 largest MSO's had deployed 271,000 single CableCARDs, and that, extrapolating the number to include all cable providers, it might have been something like 339,000 CableCARDs deployed. If they were all in use in TiVos (which they certainly weren't), it represented a maximum of about 170,000 TiVo Series3 and TiVo HDs in use with CableCARDs nationwide through that point, since each uses two CableCARDs.

Obviously this was a bunch of guestimation. I'm guessing that there were far fewer than 170,000 TiVos using CableCARDs at the end of last year. Of course, that number will have increased some over the past few months.

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Mike Scott

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I did read it, but I took it to mean subscribers on digital cable systems. It's the bulk of subscribers which is most important to any service industry, not a particular faction of a particular fraction of subs. Nonetheless, even limiting it to CableCard subscribers, at most only a bit more than 1 in 10 digital cable drops has an S3 TiVo hanging off it, based upon this very same article provided by mikeyts. Likely it's fewer than 1 in 20.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Firekite

If the numbers you're mentioning with no source attributed are referring strictly to digital cable, then this is interesting information.

I attributed sources to every one. The remainder of your post is not worthy of a response.

What my post said was that the NCTA claimed that, through the beginning of December, the 5 largest MSO's had deployed 271,000 single CableCARDs, and that, extrapolating the number to include all cable providers, it might have been something like 339,000 CableCARDs deployed.

Within a reasonable margin, that guestimation is quite accurate. It's a far, far larger sample than is used by Nielsen to rate TV shows. It's also a far larger sample than is usually available for scientific researchers in most fields.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Firekite

If they were all in use in TiVos (which they certainly weren't), it represented a maximum of about 170,000 TiVo Series3 and TiVo HDs in use with CableCARDs nationwide through that point, since each uses two CableCARDs.

Even if we assume every TiVo has only 1 CableCard, and only TiVos were included in the count, it still limits the number of CATV based S3 TiVos to less than 400,000. Even if it were 4,000,000, however, it would still be a drop in the bucket. 'A much bigger drop, to be sure, but still a drop nonetheless.

I’d agree in 10 years there may be a tiny handful of always on channels and the rest will be streamed on demand or vod or sdv- whatever they are calling it at that moment.

Video On Demand means you request a service stream and it is sent out to you when you request it.

Impulse Pay Per View means you request a program and at some point in time receive it. Traditional IPPV programs are broadcast at specific times. If the sub were 5 minutes late requesting the program, they would miss the first 5 minutes. Most CATV providers cut off ordering of PPV events 10 minutes into the event in order to prevent complaints from consumers about not receiving the entire program.

Switched Digital Video means a stream is only sent to a node if someone on that node has requested the content, whether that content happens to be scheduoed or not.

Linear Channels are sent to every node in the system, no matter whether anyone on the node has requested it or not.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MichaelK

I am not intimately away- but isn’t that what att’s uverse already does even- streams only the channel you want at that moment?

That's right. Their node coverage is 1 household, as opposed to between 500 and 1000 homes for most CATV systems. On the other hand, their bandwidth is even more severely limited. A CATV system with no analog channels has an ultimate maximum bandwidth of about 40 Gigabits per second downstream. Most current CATV systems have somewhere around 5 Gigabits or so actually allocated to digital QAMs. San Antonio is somewhat unique in having nearly 10G available for digital QAMs, but I suspect other systems will begin cutting back on analog services before very long.

Note AT&T's offering currently can only deliver a single HD stream to the house. One can have several SD programs on or being recorded around the house, but only 1 HD.

Is there any definitive way to tell if a channel is SDV or not? It seems that many of the reports of SDV channels turn out instead to be failures of the cable provider to provide access to that channel by cable card.
It seems a reliable way to make this test would compare channels on a series 3 TiVo and a bidirectional device with a cable card (i.e., a cable company provided set top box).
Is there any easier way to find out which channels, if any, are SDV?

Is there any definitive way to tell if a channel is SDV or not? It seems that many of the reports of SDV channels turn out instead to be failures of the cable provider to provide access to that channel by cable card.
It seems a reliable way to make this test would compare channels on a series 3 TiVo and a bidirectional device with a cable card (i.e., a cable company provided set top box).
Is there any easier way to find out which channels, if any, are SDV?

In some places the cable companies are blatently stating that some new channels are "Not available to CableCARD subscribers". Go to your cable provider's site and search for announcement of the new channel and read the fine print.

Otherwise, even if it's on the wire as non-switched linear service, if they don't advertise the channel in a PSIP loop in stream which contains it, there's no way to know that its there. Even with that, TiVo couldn't detect it.

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Mike Scott

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Note AT&T's offering currently can only deliver a single HD stream to the house. One can have several SD programs on or being recorded around the house, but only 1 HD.

That's interesting. We're not in an AT&T market, so I haven't researched the specifics of Uverse, but that's good to know (my in-laws are moving to an area that is serviced by AT&T and supposed to get Uverse in the near future according to AT&T). Any idea if that's a surmountable issue that they tend to rectify in the foreseeable future?

That was mentioned in this thread one week ago (some 65 posts back) here, in post #1353 by hsfjr. We subsequently discussed the implications some. I found it to be "encouraging", given that CableLabs must have thought that most of the players had basically finished products to bring if they were holding an interoperability testing event.

Thanks anyway.

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Mike Scott

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That's interesting. We're not in an AT&T market, so I haven't researched the specifics of Uverse, but that's good to know (my in-laws are moving to an area that is serviced by AT&T and supposed to get Uverse in the near future according to AT&T). Any idea if that's a surmountable issue that they tend to rectify in the foreseeable future?

i AM NOT an expert- but my understanding is the problem is ATT in most areas does not run fiber to the house like verizon does with fios. ATT runs fiber nearby and then still uses the twisted pair to send something akin to DSL from the fiber to the house. So I assume the limiting facotr is what you can put on a single copper twisted pair and I know that's a bunch more limited compared to fios's fiber or cable's coax.

Yeah, I think AT&T uses FTTN (fiber to the node) rather than FTTP (fiber to the premises). I wouldn't expect them to significantly improve available bandwidth to each house unless they rewire (or come up with a better compression scheme, I suppose).

I created a new thread, but decided to cross post it here since some of you probably get notifications on this thread.

The hdguru's most recent post is about how SDV breaks CableCards. It's a pretty good read, but the part I found most interesting is quoted below.

"The HD Guru™ has surveyed several makers of CableCARD ready sets, and all said their sets were never designed to add such a device and even if their respective sets have USB ports, they will not be able to accept such an adapter.

So this leaves only the owners of high definition TiVo DVRs. The adapter device should work with HD TiVos, however, according to a Cisco spokesperson, its version is now undergoing testing at Cablelabs and is not expected to be released until sometime this summer. A Motorola source would not provide any status or a release date, likely missing the promised availability in the second quarter 2008."

This is the first confirmation of a Scientific Atlanta / Cisco Tuning Adapter.

Ok this is my thinking I'm calling COX today and asking for a refund for the HD channels I'm paying for and not getting and if they tell me no way. We all should file a class action law suit..... anybody with me???????

Ok this is my thinking I'm calling COX today and asking for a refund for the HD channels I'm paying for and not getting and if they tell me no way. We all should file a class action law suit..... anybody with me???????

You bought a box that had known technology limitations at the time you bought it. So why do you want to sue Cox? I can't see where they had anything to do with your problems.

Ok this is my thinking I'm calling COX today and asking for a refund for the HD channels I'm paying for and not getting and if they tell me no way. We all should file a class action law suit..... anybody with me???????

I'm not looking for a fight just for the cable company to support the customer. And my right to choose receiver. So one month (many months ago) I get a tivoS3 I call cox and have them add HD package and cable cards with no problems and everything works GREAT and slowly they take away HD channels but keep billing the same hummm. Is this a tivo thing? I think not

Ok this is my thinking I'm calling COX today and asking for a refund for the HD channels I'm paying for and not getting and if they tell me no way. We all should file a class action law suit..... anybody with me???????

I think it is exactly the right approach to ask for a programming discount for the units which can't get the channels...thanks, but non thanks for the temporarily free STB offer, however, I would like a reduction of $.XX/mo per channel for each CC (or UDCP)

That´s what I will do if I ever bother.

You might consider your initial asking price to be something related to the $$/channel the cable cos use in arguing against ala carte pricing.

all I was saying was tivo didn't add two way hardware, but cox and other cable companies use it for PPV,eod,and SDV. so it is Tivo you should sue.

There's no basis for suit there unless there was some kind of explicit guarantee from TiVo that the product would work with all current and future cable technologies, which is something he couldn't possibly do. Both TiVo and the cable companies have made it clear from the beginning that you can't access IPPV, VOD and the cable providers' interactive guides with CableCARDs.

If you're unhappy with your cable company making it impossible for you to access HD services that you started out with with your equipment, with no offered decrease in price, then you have a greivance that you can file with your local franchising authority (a city or county office--you can find out who they are from your cable provider).

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Mike Scott

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good point {{{{{NOT}}}}} if you pay for a service you should get it. I have no problem with COX or Tivo. But if you pay for a PPV fight or movie your should get it right? But if you don't it then you have no basis for a refund. hummmmmmmmmm. It's really simple you pay for service then you get it.

There are dozens of discussions in this forum about suing TiVo and/or cable providers for people not being able to access channels with TiVo that are now offered as SDV services. I'm sure that several such discussions have been held in the first 1400 posts in this thread. I don't think that we need another.

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Mike Scott

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Ok this is my thinking I'm calling COX today and asking for a refund for the HD channels I'm paying for and not getting and if they tell me no way. We all should file a class action law suit..... anybody with me???????

Just recently Cox OC did enable all the new HD channels for CableCard users (after a pretty long period where that wasn't the case) so I don't know what your beef is currently. If/when SDV actually deploys (which could be any day now) that may change but for now you can tune almost every channel there is.

You bought a box that had known technology limitations at the time you bought it. So why do you want to sue Cox? I can't see where they had anything to do with your problems.

Cox made it unable to view channels you are paying for, so it is their responsibility to provide those channels on the hardware you purchased, or provide you a package option that excludes channels your hardware is incapable of receiving.

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